In the Garden Trilogy (33 page)

Roz was right about the noise. He heard the laughter and squeals, the stomping feet before he’d hit the top. Following it, he strolled down the hall, then paused in the open doorway.

It was obviously a room occupied by boys. And though it was certainly tidier than his had been at those tender ages, it wasn’t static or regimented. A few toys were scattered on the floor, books and other debris littered the desk and shelves. It smelled of soap, shampoo, wild youth, and crayons.

In the midst of it, Stella sat on the floor, mercilessly tickling a pajama-clad Gavin while a blissfully naked Luke scrambled around the room making crazed hooting sounds through his cupped hands.

“What’s my name?” Stella demanded as she sent her oldest son into helpless giggles.

“Mom!”

She made a harsh buzzing sound and dug fingers into his ribs. “Try again, small, helpless boy child. What is my name?”

“Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!” He tried to wiggle away and was flipped over.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Empress,” he managed on hitching giggles.

“And? The rest, give it all or the torment continues.”

“Empress Magnificent of the Entire Universe!”

“And don’t you forget it.” She gave him a loud, smacking kiss on his cotton-clad butt, and sat back. “And now you, short, frog-faced creature.” She got to her feet, rubbing her hands together as Luke screamed in delight.

And stumbled back with a scream of her own when she saw Logan in the doorway. “Oh, my God! You scared me to death!”

“Sorry, just watching the show. Your Highness. Hey, kid.” He nodded at Gavin, who lay on the floor. “How’s it going?”

“She defeated me. Now I have to go to bed, ’cause that’s the law of the land.”

“I’ve heard that.” He picked up the bottom half of a pair of X-Men pj’s, lifted an eyebrow at Luke. “These your mom’s?”

Luke let out a rolling gut laugh, and danced, happy with his naked state. “Uh-
uh
. They’re mine. I don’t have to wear them unless she catches me.”

Luke started to make a break for the adjoining bath and was scooped up, one-armed, by his mother.

Stronger than she looks, Logan mused as she hoisted her son over her head.

“Foolish boy, you’ll never escape me.” She lowered him. “Into the pj’s, and into bed.” She glanced over at Logan. “Is there something ...”

“I got invited to the ... get-together downstairs.”

“Is it a party?” Luke wanted to know when Logan handed him the pajama bottoms. “Are there cookies?”

“It’s a meeting, a grown-up meeting, and if there are cookies,” Stella said as she turned down Luke’s bed, “you can have some tomorrow.”

“David makes really good cookies,” Gavin commented. “Better than Mom’s.”

“If that wasn’t true, I’d have to punish you severely.” She turned to his bed, where he sat grinning at her, and using the heel of her hand shoved him gently onto his back.

“But you’re prettier than he is.”

“Clever boy. Logan, could you tell everyone I’ll be down shortly? We’re just going to read for a bit first.”

“Can he read?” Gavin asked.

“I can. What’s the book?”

“Tonight we get
Captain Underpants
.” Luke grabbed the book and hurried over to shove it into Logan’s hands.

“So is he a superhero?”

Luke’s eyes widened like saucers. “You don’t know about Captain Underpants?”

“Can’t say I do.” He turned the book over in his hands, but he was looking at the boy. He’d never read to kids before. It might be entertaining. “Maybe I should read it, then I can find out. If that suits the Empress.”

“Oh, well, I—”

“Please, Mom! Please!”

At the chorus on either side of her, Stella eased back with the oddest feeling in her gut. “Sure. I’ll just go straighten up the bath.”

She left them to it, mopping up the wet, gathering bath toys, while Logan’s voice, deep and touched with ironic amusement, carried to her.

She hung damp towels, dumped bath toys into a plastic net to dry, fussed. And she felt the chill roll in around her. A hard, needling cold that speared straight to her bones.

Her creams and lotions tumbled over the counter as if an angry hand swept them. The thuds and rattles sent her springing forward to grab at them before they fell to the floor.

And each one was like a cube of ice in her hand.

She’d seen them move. Good God, she’d seen them
move.

Shoving them back, she swung instinctively to the connecting doorway to shield her sons from the chill, from the fury she felt slapping the air.

There was Logan, with the chair pulled between the beds, as she did herself, reading about the silly adventures of Captain Underpants in that slow, easy voice, while her boys lay tucked in and drifting off.

She stood there, blocking that cold, letting it beat against her back until he finished, until he looked up at her.

“Thanks.” She was amazed at how calm her voice sounded. “Boys, say good night to Mr. Kitridge.”

She moved into the room as they mumbled it. When the cold didn’t follow her, she took the book, managed a smile. “I’ll be down in just a minute.”

“Okay. See you later, men.”

The interlude left him feeling mellow and relaxed. Reading bedtime stories was a kick. Who knew? Captain Underpants. Didn’t that beat all.

He wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime, especially if he could talk Mama into letting them read a graphic novel.

He’d liked seeing her wrestling on the floor with her boy. Empress Magnificent, he thought with a half laugh.

Then the breath was knocked out of him. The force of the cold came like a tidal wave at his back, swamping him even as it shoved him forward.

He pitched at the top of the stairs, felt his head go light at the thought of the fall. Flailing out, he managed to grab the rail and, spinning his body, hook his other hand over it while tiny black dots swam in front of his eyes. For another instant he feared he would simply tumble over the railing, pushed by the momentum.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shape, vague but female. And from it he felt a raw and bitter rage.

Then it was gone.

He could hear his own breath heaving in and out, and feel the clamminess of panic sweat down his back. Though his legs wanted to fold on him, he stayed where he was, working to steady himself until Stella came out.

Her half smile faded the minute she saw him. “What is it?” She moved to him quickly. “What happened?”

“She—this ghost of yours—has she ever scared the boys?”

“No. Exactly the opposite. She’s ... comforting, even protective of them.”

“All right. Let’s go downstairs.” He took her hand firmly in his, prepared to drag her to safety if necessary.

“Your hand’s cold.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“You tell me.”

“I intend to.”

 

HE TOLD THEM ALL WHEN THEY SAT AROUND THE library table with their folders and books and notes. And he dumped a good shot of brandy in his coffee as he did.

“There’s been nothing,” Roz began, “in all the years she’s been part of this house, that indicates she’s a threat. People have been frightened or uneasy, but no one’s ever been physically attacked.”

“Can ghosts physically attack?” David wondered.

“You wouldn’t ask if you’d been standing at the top of the stairs with me.”

“Poltergeists can cause stuff to fly around,” Hayley commented. “But they usually manifest around adolescent kids. Something about puberty can set them off. Anyway, this isn’t that. It might be that an ancestor of Logan’s did something to her. So she’s paying him back.”

“I’ve been in this house dozens of times. She’s never bothered with me before.”

“The children.” Stella spoke softly as she looked over her own notes. “It centers on them. She’s drawn to children, especially little boys. She’s protective of them. And she almost, you could say, envies me for having them, but not in an angry way. More sad. But she was angry the night I was going out to dinner with Logan.”

“Putting a man ahead of your kids.” Roz held up a hand. “I’m not saying that’s what I think. We have to think like she does. We talked about this before, Stella, and I’ve been thinking back on it. The only times I remember feeling anything angry from her was when I went out with men now and again, when my boys were coming up. But I didn’t experience anything as direct or upsetting as this. But then, there was nothing to it. I never had any strong feelings for any of them.”

“I don’t see how she could know what I feel or think.”

But the dreams, Stella thought. She’s been in my dreams.

“Let’s not get irrational now,” David interrupted. “Let’s follow this line through. Let’s say she believes things are serious, or heading that way, between you and Logan. She doesn’t like it, that’s clear enough. The only people who’ve felt threatened, or been threatened are the two of you. Why? Does it make her angry? Or is she jealous?”

“A jealous ghost.” Hayley drummed her hands on the table. “Oh, that’s good. It’s like she sympathizes, relates to you being a woman, a single woman, with kids. She’ll help you look after them, even sort of look after you. But then you put a man in the picture, and she’s all bitchy about it. She’s like, you’re not supposed to have a nice, standard family—mom, dad, kids—because I didn’t.”

“Logan and I hardly ... All he did was read them a story.”

“The sort of thing a father might do,” Roz pointed out.

“I ... well, when he was reading to them, I was putting the bathroom back in shape. And she was there. I felt her. Then, well, my things. The things I keep on the counter started to jump.
I
jumped.”

“Holy shit,” Hayley responded.

“I went to the door, and in the boy’s room, everything was calm, normal. I could feel the warmth on the front of me, and this, this raging cold against my back. She didn’t want to frighten them. Only me.”

But buying a baby monitor went on her list. From now on, she wanted to hear everything that went on in that room when her boys were up there without her.

“This is a good angle, Stella, and you’re smart enough to know we should follow it.” Roz laid her hands on the library table. “Nothing we’ve turned up indicates this spirit is one of the Harper women, as has been assumed all these years. Yet someone knew her, knew her when she was alive, knew that she died. So was it hushed up, ignored? Either way, it might explain her being here. If it was hushed up or ignored, it seems most logical she was a servant, a mistress, or a lover.”

“I bet she had a child.” Hayley laid a hand over her own. “Maybe she died giving birth to it, or had to give it up, and died from a broken heart. It would have been one of the Harper men who got her into trouble, don’t you think? Why would she stay here if it wasn’t because she lived here or—”

“Died here,” Stella finished. “Reginald Harper was head of the house during the period when we think she died. Roz, how the hell do we go about finding out if he had a mistress, a lover, or an illegitimate child?”

LOGAN HAD BEEN IN LOVE TWICE IN HIS LIFE. HE’D been in lust a number of times. He’d experienced extreme interest or heavy like, but love had only knocked him down and out twice. The first had been in his late teens, when both he and the girl of his dreams had been too young to handle it.

They’d burned each other and their love out with passion, jealousies, and a kind of crazed energy. He could look back at that time now and think of Lisa Anne Lauer with a sweet nostalgia and affection.

Then there was Rae. He’d been a little older, a little smarter. They’d taken their time, two years of time before heading into marriage. They’d both wanted it, though some who knew him were surprised, not only by the engagement but by his agreement to move north with her.

It hadn’t surprised Logan. He’d loved her, and north was where she’d wanted to be. Needed to be, he corrected, and he’d figured, naively as it turned out, that he could plant himself anywhere.

He’d left the wedding plans up to her and her mother, with some input from his own. He wasn’t crazy. But he’d enjoyed the big, splashy, crowded wedding with all its pomp.

He’d had a good job up north. At least in theory. But he’d been restless and dissatisfied in the beehive of it, and out of place in the urban buzz.

The small-town boy, he thought as he and his crew finished setting the treated boards on the roof of a twelve-foot pergola. He was just too small-town, too small-time, to fit into the urban landscape.

He hadn’t thrived there, and neither had his marriage. Little things at first, picky things—things he knew in retrospect they should have dealt with, compromised on, overcome. Instead, they’d both let those little things fester and grow until they’d pushed the two of them, not just apart, he thought, but in opposite directions.